I am the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press.  A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, was just published by Prolific Press (available at Amazon), and I have other poems in print and online journals. I am an adjunct professor creative writing at George Washington University.  

​[2]
​
Unable in the Seventies to write,
I tried to paint.  Sometimes an image came
of grainy reproductions on the pages
of my biography (see Chapter 12,
"The Bad Years"); I ignored the mockery. 
Beneath inadequate, slum-filtered light,
a snake, obsessively moiréd in gold
and black, rose up to eat a dragonfly
(ill-drawn, the wings a Tiffany vitrine).
A leggy blonde, eyes hidden by an arm,
lay masturbating in a garden while,
beyond her granite walls, a stubby man 
amidst volcanos shook his fists at heaven.
Acrylics only in that crowded corner,
but oh, the colors!  My few visitors
did not know what to say, yet always found
some neutralizing, humorous remark.
And by the morning, all the water had
evaporated from the paint and left
my impastos flat, the tones as dull and listless
as the "before" hair in a TV ad.





[5]
From the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; from the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
                                                                                                                            -Yeats

Where do you draw the line?  The businessmen -
fey mantises like Kubin's "Profiteers" -
have crossed the ornamental bridge between
the narrow houses on the northern bank
and Castle Island.  Windowboxes full
of zinnias and harmlessness give way
to faded bunting on the Martyrs' Tomb;
the green and pitted heroes on their plinths;
the Castle, guarded only by the love
the grey pedestrians have borne for it;
the art museum with its neglected treasures.
Beneath the speculative gaze, the scene
and populace grow seedier.  A sound
of protest has the drawback of arising
from nowhere and without a translator,
but riles the mantises.  "I don't believe,"
says one, "that a contemporary soul
would really symbolize itself like this.
It's all from books."  Another, younger, glares
with hatred at the shadows, but the tone 
in which he speaks of the improvements he
has made in Prague, Tijuana, and Rangoon
is cool and mild.  That hint of gentleness,
of hope, decides me, and I find a job
beneath my education and pretensions
in one of the new plants; which, when it fails,
directs me to the bottles and the scrap
I pick with loathing from the heap of loathing.





[6]

"How many worlds know nothing of us," said
... Lucretius?  I forget.  In one of them,
a geek (the in-house meaning is a taller,
cleaner, and somewhat less asocial nerd)
returns to his work-station after calling
at two A.M. for pizza.  Here and there,
teak paneling and rugs and hanging plants
assuage the basic metal and the glare,
but they are all the same to him.  Upon
his screen, perfection nears, and obviates
the plasticine that ate the dog and bit
the doctor's arms off in a prior remake.
He feels a part of what an artist feels;
and, six months later, in a theater far
from women and the weight they give to life,
I see, and thus become, what he has made:
the scurrying monster menacing the team,
the world, America, the heroine,
the city.  Yet I also am the hero,
who fights as no one ever fought for me;
who in his triumph fills my afternoon
with utter purposelessness ... And the kid
at the computer, if he knew my guilt
and passion, would say something like "Bizarre-o!"





[7]
                                                                             to Homer, ill

Before he dies the cat will speak to me,
softly: "Your constant emphasis on substance
blinds you to beauty, save as accident.
Yet beauty is a self-subsistent thing;
not Truth - we both mistrust that - but a fact
that cannot be interpreted or used.
And one is adequately placed upon
a bed, between your pillow and your wife's;
or, when you're out, on a forbidden couch;
or in a basement when the pain and pills
make one afraid (or lonely in a way
whose only goal is solitude), to see
that it is neither simple nor complex
but absolute.  You too have lived indoors,
for outside there are cancers, dogs, and cars;
have felt, when you allowed yourself to feel,
the love that feeds you, watches while you eat,
cleans up your mess, builds fires when it's cold,
and which at last is impotent and finite."





[8]

To be a writer of an awkward sort
and yet invited, as a friend of friends,
to one of those vast homes above the city,
was to refill my glass and load my plate,
and find a lonely stretch of window-wall,
and gaze upon a million points of light
between my viewpoint and the distant ocean.
The red of cars that moved away from me,
the glowing tower-clusters, and the pulse
of indigo and turquoise cineplexes
were once or twice obscured by silhouettes 
of deer.  Evicted by developers
from the last scrubby hillsides north of town,
they ate the ivy.  (Or the swifter shade
of a coyote would appear and exit;
the species conduct business out of sight.)
"Oh, it's adorable!" exclaimed a female,
noticing a faun.  And suddenly
at bay, my unfamiliar odor sniffed,
I underwent, with her or with her mate,
a moment as predictable as instinct. 
"A writer," he or she repeated; saw
my cultivated air, and tried to guess
which of the hipper studios or sitcoms 
I worked for. - "Not that kind." - Attraction rose:
I had to be a novelist, and novels
(once they are optioned) have a certain aura.
I smiled, and grimly mentioned poetry,
and, never far enough outside myself,
observed the endgame: the peculiar mix
of awe, a kind of panic, and contempt;
the hasty shuffle through the mental files;
the imprecise allusions; my response,
which - mild, schoolmasterish, avuncular,
self-deprecating, cold - was never right;
the speed with which he carried his career
or she her loveliness to safety.  Now,
beyond the window, by the swimming pool,
the deer put down its graceful head and drank.
I wondered if the chlorine hurt them.  Fuck 'em.





[10]
                                                         B46

Thus filling in my birthyear on a form
(not cheerful about what it represents),
I wonder if, while I have been alive,
an Air Force bomber ever bore that number.
I know from films the workhorse 17
and dreadnought 24 that once prevented
my parents from being turned to smoke or soap;
the 29 that dropped the atom bombs; 
the stately 36, last of the props.
And in my childhood I was reassured
and thrilled by possibly the same formation
of swept-wing 47s that rejoiced
the heart of Wilhelm Reich before he died.
The long hegemony of 52s
is ending now, and Jorie Graham made love
above a desert full of their remains
to exorcise bad phallic energy.
(Believing war and wastefulness comprise 
Spinoza's Deus sive natura,
I would have done it differently.  Moreover,
the phallus is a wing; it doesn't need them.)
In short, the 46 never existed
except somewhere on a rejected blueprint;
and a new generation thrives beneath
the inefficient 1, the creepy 2.
Yet in my daydreams, the B46
still flies.  We cannot bear to let it go,
recalling how it turned the tanks around
before they reached Allende; how it drove
Somoza from Managua and the colonels
from Athens.  Now, the peace sign on its tail,
it drops supplies wherever they are needed:
appeals to women and the underclass
to rise, small weapons, software, seeds and food,
and something else that I cannot imagine.